Music
The Music of Miami Vice is one of the hallmarks of the series. The inclusion of popular music as an integral part of a scene is a common feature of modern television dramas and the origin of the technique is often credited to Miami Vice. While other television shows of the time used made-for-TV music, the Miami Vice production team would spend $10,000 or more per episode to buy the rights to original recordings by contemporary artists. Getting a song played on Miami Vice became a considerable boost to both musicians and their respective record labels. In fact, at the show's peak, some American newspapers, including USA Today, would publish a song list for music due to be featured in that week's episode. Equally popular was the shows's background score of smooth synth vibes, composed especially for it by Czech composer Jan Hammer. Some of his cues were released as commercial singles in the 1980s and achieved considerable chart success around the world, chiefly his "Miami Vice Theme", which remains the last television theme and the last instrumental to reach #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jan Hammer left the show for it's final season, and his replacement Tim Truman shifted the background music in a more gritty, rock-orientated direction, a move that divides fans to this day. Perhaps the most iconic music scene from the series is the "In the Air Tonight" scene from the pilot, but the popularity of all of the music used led to the release of several soundtrack albums. Three of these ("Miami Vice", "Miami Vice II" and "Miami Vice III") mostly contained popular songs used in the show along with excepts of Jan Hammer's score, but Hammer also released several dedicated albums of his own work, culminating in "Miami Vice: The Complete Collection" in 2002, released solely as a result of relentless demand from fans. Click below for information on the music used in each season: * Season 1 Music * Season 2 Music * Season 3 Music * Season 4 Music * Season 5 Music Alternatively, click the following links for information on the series' official soundtracks: * Miami Vice * Miami Vice II * Escape From Television * Miami Vice III * Miami Vice: The Complete Collection * Miami Vice film soundtrack Music Notes * Owing to the differences in legislation between a television broadcast and a home video release, before any show containing popular music can be released on a home media format the distributor has to gain additional rights/clearances for the featured music, even if just a brief snippet of a song is used. The associated costs and difficulties present a serious problem for many television series, particularly those made during the 70s and 80s (like WKRP In Cincinnati, Tour Of Duty, Married... With Children, and 21 Jump Street), which often have to use substitute music in scenes containing songs that are not cleared or even cut some scenes altogether, often to the programme's detriment. Worse still, some shows (such as Married and Las Vegas and Tour Of Duty) have not even been able to secure release rights for the music used in their opening credits, forcing a substitution there as well. To Universal's credit, they indicated early on that they would not release Miami Vice on DVD unless every piece of music used could be cleared, which was one reason the DVD releases of the show took such a long time to materialize. Reportedly, Universal paid out $3 million in rights/clearance fees for the first season DVDs alone. * During Vice's ''heyday, the song lists were published in periodicals such as ''USA Today each week. It was considered a career-advancement move to have a song featured on Vice ''at the time. * Some artists even composed songs specifically for use on the show, such as Glenn Frey's "You Belong To The City". Outside of the episodes in which they were used, these songs often only appeared on the official soundtracks. * Many of the songs used in the series were made by 1980s-era "New Wave" bands, but there were exceptions depending on the episode's content, most notably "Line Of Fire", which exclusively featured heavy metal music as it was the preferred genre of the main supporting character, and "Back in the World", which featured music exclusively from The Doors because the episode's backdrop was the Vietnam War. * Each episode's music budget (not including Jan Hammer/John Petersen/Tim Truman's score) cost around $10,000 for the inclusion of the track(s). * There were only two episodes that contained no popular music, just the background soundtrack composed especially for the show. * There were 322 different songs (several songs were used in two different scenes in two different episodes and numerous songs were repeated in the clip show "A Bullet For Crockett") used in the 109 episodes that had music included. Season 2 had the most songs used with 90, while Season 5 (the final season) had the least, at 50. Stats * Most songs used in a season: 90 - Season 2 * Least songs used in a season: 50 - Season 5 * Most songs used in an episode (two-hour): 14 - "The Prodigal Son" * Most songs used in an episode (one-hour): 8 - "Back in the World" * Least songs used in an episode: 0 - "Hell Hath No Fury...", "Miracle Man" * Most songs by the same artist: 8 - The Doors, all in "Back in the World" While "The Prodigal Son" features the most songs out of any episode of the television series, it is beaten by the [[Miami Vice (Film)|''Miami Vice movie]] with 16 songs. Category:Miami Vice Music